K12 Headlines

9/13/2013

Colleen Jermain, a graduate of Rogers High School and a current Middletown resident, will be leave her position as chief of staff performance and technology integration for Providence Schools to take the take the helm of the Newport District.

The Wilkes-Barre Area School Board once again appointed Bernard Prevuznak as the permanent superintendent of the Pennsylvania district. The vote at Tuesday's meeting was 6-3, with Prevuznak signing a three-year contract. His one-year contract as acting superintendent expires this coming Sunday.

One year after being hired to run the state’s second largest public school district, Jersey City Schools Superintendent Marcia V. Lyles is reshaping the district’s central administration, most recently with the hiring of a chief academic officer.

Public schools around the United States are still waiting to feel the recovery from an economic recession that officially ended four years ago, mostly because states have kept education spending low and property taxes remain depressed, according to a report released on Thursday.

Seattle’s Queen Anne Elementary School and the Dwankhozi Basic School in Zambia are trying to forge a relationship deep enough to be nourished by both differences and similarities. Ties between the schools are the latest fruit of Dwankhozi Hope, an organization founded in 2006 by an emigrant from Zambia and friends who are part of the Queen Anne community.

Gov. Gary Herbert said he is negotiating with Senate President Wayne Niederhauser on legislation that would add more detail to the state of Utah’s controversial new school grading system. He said without changes the grades offer little help to parents and educators looking to improve education.

A state board has voted to allow 13 school districts in Arkansas to continue using teachers, administrators, and other staff as armed guards, despite a warning from the state's top attorney that the licensing law they relied upon was intended for private businesses.

Over a million children and adults around the globe will celebrate International Dot Day (Sept. 15), a grassroots “creativity & courage” movement, which has generated support around the globe, from participants in all 50 U.S. states, on all seven continents, in 75 countries, and even on the International Space Station.

For as much anxiety as Americans have about whether our schools are letting children down, why don't we spend as much time and effort fretting about whether parents are letting their children down as well? We think nothing of grading schools, grading teachers, and grading our kids at every turn to make sure that they're getting what they need, but parents are rarely so scrutinized.

9/12/2013

Cloud solutions are allowing IT departments to adjust their strategies away from cumbersome, sitebased disparate technology architectures to integrated, cloudbased solutions. Jupiter iO was built from the ground up for the cloud. Jupiter iO integrates the Student Information System, Learning Management System, Gradebook, and Data Analytics for K12 schools.

Anonymous Alerts allows school officials to meet where students are located online with familiar tools like private text message reporting from any Internet enabled device. Anonymous Alerts provides a secure 1-way or 2-way encrypted dialogue increasing the flow of timely information to school officials as problems arise.

The foundation’s three-year grant will provide MIND’s ST Math® early learning program for 1,400 preschoolers as well as professional development sessions by MIND Research staff for 20 preschool teachers.

Nichols says the system has spent the past year working on a strategic proposal called the ’2020 Plan’. During that time he says community involvement played a large role as nearly 1,000 community members provided feedback and suggestions.